Researcher of the MonthProfessor Kwok Fai Cheung

An integrated view of engineering problems has made Prof. Cheung the ideal
choice to teach the Capstone Design Class in the Department of Ocean and
Resources Engineering (ORE), where he has been teaching since 1993. He also
teaches Water Wave Mechanics and Coastal and Harbor Engineering. The Department
offers an academic program leading to the Master of Science and Doctor of
Philosophy degrees in three disciplines: coastal engineering, offshore
engineering, and ocean resources engineering. Prof. Cheung currently supports
19 graduate research assistants and 2 post-doctoral fellows through outside
grants and contracts from the Office of Naval Research (ONR), Hawaii State Civil
Defense, National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program, National Science Foundation
(NSF), NOAA Sea Grant, and local engineering firms. He is expecting a project
from FEMA to map hurricane inundation on Hawaii coastlines for emergency
response plan development.

His many projects can be grouped into three main categories; tsunami modeling,
hurricane inundation modeling, and wind wave modeling. For each type, he
applies the appropriate suites of models to describe the complex phenomena.
Also in each case, the goal is to determine the effects of the ocean environment
on coastlines, infrastructure, ship performance, or human activities. One
example of his work is the ENDEAVOR project, for the Department of Defense. The
goal is to develop a web-based system that enables ship performance analysis,
mission planning, and coastal management with a realistically simulated ocean
environment (http://oceanforecast.net/).
As the figure developed from this project reflects, global wave conditions were predicted first then followed by
the regional and coastal wave conditions. The computed wave spectra were applied
to determine motion and steering effects of marine vehicles. This work was
performed in collaboration with MHPCC, Navatek, and SAIC.

Prof. Cheung now has a 16-node Dell cluster with 128 processors in his
department.

Prof. Cheung earned his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia in
Vancouver, B.C. in 1991 and obtained his Professional Engineer (PE) licenses in
B.C. and Hawaii in 1993 and 1999 respectively. Read more about his work at
http://oe.ore.hawaii.edu/OE/ore_cheung.htm.